ESRC 1 + 3 funding

How does this work, do you have to do all four years at one university? Or can you do your master's at Uni A and do your Phd at Uni B?

How does this work, do you have to do all four years at one university? Or can you do your master's at Uni A and do your Phd at Uni B?

The "1" can be done at one university, whilst the "3" can be done at another. It becomes difficult (and sometimes impossible) to switch your doctoral institution half way through a project, and the ESRC explicitly state that they do not recommend it (and may halt funding if it is the case). This is because each ESRC funding application is assessed according to certain criteria, and this criteria includes the quality of your supervisor and the relevance of the work to departmental activities. If you switch departments, then these scores are invalid. Given how specialist PhDs are, you may have only one or two people in the UK that you could study under. Then there is the problem of having a department that is ESRC-approved. By this I mean that you may have an amazing supervisor working at a department that the ESRC does not award funding to, so transferring to that department is impossible.

Can you do that with funding for the 1, without exceptional circumstances (eg. your supervisor leaving) cropping up between the 1 and the 3, though? I went through the guidelines (all 90 pages of them - that was a very soul-sapping afternoon) before I started and it seemed to indicate that it was not possible to do that, for the reasons you mention (supervisors and departmental accreditation) unless you had major extenuating circumstances and could get your current institution and supervisor to agree to the switch (and thus effectively lose one of 'their' funded places).

Am I making sense?

so the answer is that you are expected to do your master's and then the PhD at the same uni.
Another thing that just popped into my mind: say someone gets the funding , but falls very ill 3 months short of finishing their master's and doesn't finish it (ie no phd either) or they decide not to do the Phd afterwards after all (can they do that?) and then that person would be made to pay to the ESRC?

Can you do that with funding for the 1, without exceptional circumstances (eg. your supervisor leaving) cropping up between the 1 and the 3, though? I went through the guidelines (all 90 pages of them - that was a very soul-sapping afternoon) before I started and it seemed to indicate that it was not possible to do that, for the reasons you mention (supervisors and departmental accreditation) unless you had major extenuating circumstances and could get your current institution and supervisor to agree to the switch (and thus effectively lose one of 'their' funded places).

Am I making sense?

Hiya,

I know this thread is a bit old but hopefully someone will read this. Are there often people on the ESRC 1+3 programme but without the funding?

I've gotten a place on the programme (quota) but I don't know if i have funding yet.

Sorry - further to your other question - if it is a quota place, then it will be funded provided the department has funding (which they may not know yet). Bascially if the ESRC awards them any money they will award it to you. Normally a quota offer would be automatic funding but this year I don't think departments know the number of awards until June.

What happens if you are on 1+3 programme, get your MSc and then decide not to do a PhD, will you have to pay ESRC back the funding for your MSc?

You'd have to ask the university, but usually you pay back any overpaid funding (i.e. anything paid in advance). It's a bit naughty though, because the university won't get any of the money back that you didn't spend, so they basically lose 50k in PhD funding...